Josh Hawley, AI, and the Public Good
Breakpoint
Colson Center
4.8 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2026
⏱️ 4 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
AI is here. Hiding from it isn't an option.
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For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. |
| 0:05.7 | For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. |
| 0:09.3 | In a recent essay published at first thing, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri warned of the consequences of the growing presence and increasing power of artificial intelligence. |
| 0:19.1 | According to Holly, AI presents a moral crisis. Thus, we should |
| 0:22.8 | ensure that its destiny rest in our hands, not the other way around. Quote, a tool of such power |
| 0:29.2 | can serve liberty or license. It can serve our moral covenant, the freedom that lifts the worker, |
| 0:34.4 | shelters the child, disperses opportunity to the many, or it can serve license, |
| 0:39.7 | the freedom of the belly and the passions, the freedom of the strong to take what they can, |
| 0:44.2 | and bend the weak to their will. Holly argued that we're faced with decisions about AI that |
| 0:48.9 | will shape the kind of society we will become. Either we will remain dedicated to the idea that |
| 0:54.1 | all are created equal, or we will become a Either we will remain dedicated to the idea that all are created equal, or we will |
| 0:56.6 | become a society in which those who control this new technology will be, quote-unquote, more |
| 1:01.3 | equal than others. As he put it, quote, in deciding how to govern this technology, we're not merely |
| 1:06.7 | writing policy. We're renewing or surrendering the moral basis of our life together. |
| 1:11.8 | The covenant does not keep itself. Every generation must swear it again. |
| 1:16.2 | Ours will swear it or break it over artificial intelligence, end quote. |
| 1:21.0 | Unlike many of the warnings that have been issued by those wary of AI, |
| 1:24.7 | Hawley also offered a series of proposals to protect those outside the quote-unquote |
| 1:29.7 | faculty lounge and boardroom. First, he pointed to the importance of labor. New developments should |
| 1:34.8 | aid workers not replace them. And the issue of work is not really about just lost wages. |
| 1:40.3 | So replacing earnings with a universal basic income, as some have suggested, is not the solution. |
| 1:46.3 | As Holly put it, quote, decades of research show that meaningful work ranks alongside faith and family as one of the pillars of a happy life. |
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